Mad Spring Obsession

Crestmont City didn’t care that a multi-billion dollar empire was currently hanging by a thread. The June sky cracked open, dumping sheets of violent rain over the West District Marriage Registry.

Inside the idling black Bentley, the silence was suffocating.

“Miss Ashford, we’ve arrived,” Martin Hale said, his voice tight as he engaged the brake.

In the beige leather rear seat, Elena didn’t flinch.

She sat perfectly still, a vision of absolute, untouchable restraint. She wore a sleeveless black silk blouse and a flowing ivory skirt that pooled around her legs. Her blunt bob slashed across her jawline, exposing a slender, elegant neck. No heavy makeup. No desperate grab for attention. Just a single white camellia pinned over her heart, and a slim diamond watch ticking down the seconds on her wrist.

Minimal. Distant. Lethal.

She had eyes too dark and far too calm for a twenty-two-year-old. When she looked at you, it felt like she was dissecting your flaws for sport.

I’m Elena Ashford, she had told them at the airport.

Not Ansel. Ashford.

The Ansel family’s dirty little secret, exiled overseas a decade ago, only to be dragged back today on a private jet because her golden-child sister, Audrey, had vanished on the eve of her arranged wedding. The Kade financial dynasty was threatening to burn the Ansels to the ground.

So, they brought in the backup bride.

“There’s an umbrella behind you,” Martin offered, practically sweating. Hesitation today meant corporate slaughter.

“No need,” Elena replied. Her voice was smooth glass.

She checked her watch. 2:15 PM.

Without rushing, she stepped out into the biting rain. She had barely reached the stone steps of the registry when a savage roar tore through the storm.

Elena turned.

A black Bugatti Chiron practically weaponized its arrival, screeching to a halt at the base of the steps. The scissor door lifted, and chaos stepped out.

Julian Kade.

He wore a floral shirt unbuttoned low, white shorts, and violet-tinted hair that caught the gray light. He was arrogant, reckless, and radiated the kind of arrogant charm that ruined lives.

Martin scrambled out of the Bentley, bowing so low he nearly ate pavement. “Mr. Kade, welcome. That is our eldest miss.”

The rain abruptly stopped. Sunlight slashed through the clouds, hitting the plaza like a spotlight.

Julian pulled his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose. His gaze raked up the wet stone steps and landed on Elena.

She stood there like a blade wrapped in silk—solitary, upright, completely unfazed by his theatrical bullshit.

“Oh,” Julian drawled, his lips curling. “Got it.”

No polite greeting. No fake pleasantries.

“I’ve got somewhere to be,” he snapped, dismissing her entirely. “Let’s make this quick.”

He took two steps before his phone buzzed. He snatched it up. “Who the hell is this?”

Whatever the voice on the other end said, it lit a match to a powder keg.

Julian’s face went thunderous. He ended the call and spun on Martin, his voice dripping with pure, vicious venom.

“So this is how the Ansels play games? Audrey is still in Crestmont, warming some actor’s bed, and you fed us a lie about her being abroad?” He took a menacing step forward. “You think humiliating me is a joke? This marriage is dead.”

The words cracked like a whip.

Without a backward glance, Julian slid back into the Bugatti and tore out of the plaza in a deafening roar of horsepower.

The whole execution took less than sixty seconds.

Martin stood frozen in the damp heat, hyperventilating. “I—what do we do now?”

To be dragged home on her first day back, only to be publicly discarded on the steps of the registry. It was a humiliation that would shatter most women.

Elena just smoothed a crease from her skirt.

“You go ahead,” she said lightly, completely unbothered. “I’ll walk.”

“Please don’t be late,” Martin pleaded, practically begging. “You remember the address?”

“I do.”

The Bentley sped off to do damage control. Elena stood alone in the plaza, the scent of wet asphalt rising in the heat. She pulled out her phone, typed a single message, and hit send.

Above her, white doves exploded from the registry rooftop, their wings flashing against the violent blue of the clearing sky.

A sharp whistle cut through the breeze.

Elena didn’t turn. But across the plaza, two men froze mid-step.

Evan Cole dropped his unlit cigarette, his eyes wide enough to catch flies. “Did I just wake up in heaven?” he blurted, grabbing the arm of the man beside him. “Lucien. Look. I just saw an actual angel.”

The man beside him didn’t flinch. Lucien Vale stood tall and impossibly composed, dressed in a loose white shirt and dark trousers. Wrapped around his elegant fingers was a strand of rare agarwood prayer beads.

He looked like moonlight given physical form. Distant. Luminous. Absolutely untouchable.

Evan physically seized Lucien’s jaw, forcing his head to turn. “I’m begging you. Just look.”

Lucien cast a lazy glance.

Ten meters away stood a woman in ivory and black. The sky had washed clean, a brilliant rainbow suspended directly over her head. The breeze lifted the edge of her dark hair.

In that single, shattered second, all the light in the plaza seemed to bend toward her.

“Well?” Evan demanded, breathless. “Stunning, right?”

Lucien’s gaze snagged. The prayer beads in his hand stopped moving.

He stared at her back, his dark eyes lingering just a fraction of a second too long. Then, deliberately, he pulled his gaze away.

“The rainbow is beautiful,” Lucien murmured.

He started walking again.

Evan jogged to keep up. “And the woman?”

Lucien’s voice was soft, carrying a strange, heavy weight.

“Some people are like rainbows.”

Evan stopped dead in his tracks. “What?”

It was like watching a monk suddenly confess a sin.

“I’m getting her number,” Evan declared, spinning around to chase the girl in the ivory skirt.